The Long Road Towards Independence, Justice and Peace for the Basque Country

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

De Juana Back in Jail

The Spanish political class is enraged by ETA's decision to put an end to a masquerade that was leading nowhere. The Spaniards decided to torpedo the peace process and continue their violent repression of the Basque right to self determination. So now, the Spaniards are hitting anyone they can put their hands on, in this particular case, Basque political prisoner Iñaki de Juana.

The Basque prisoner was removed Wednesday from the hospital in the Basque city of San Sebastian where he had been recovering from a 114-day hunger strike. He was taken to Aranjuez prison, just south of Madrid.

The inmate Iñaki de Juana Chaos has been declared healthy again and was removed Wednesday from the hospital in the Basque city of San Sebastian where he had been recovering from a 114-day hunger strike. He was taken to Aranjuez prison, just south of Madrid.

On Tuesday, Interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said De Juana Chaos, released from prison on March 1 after a hunger strike that left him gravely ill, will be sent back to jail, not home, to serve out the rest of his prison term under police surveillance, a possibility that had initially been raised.

He has already served 18 years after being convicted in 25 deaths in a series of ETA attacks and now faces the last 14 months of a separate, three-year term for newspaper articles that were deemed to be terrorist threats. He is being sent to another prison but officials will not say where.

Perez Rubalcaba said in a radio interview that when he first agreed to move de Juana Chaos back in March, he did so out of humanitarian reasons. But with the ETA cease-fire over, he said, sending de Juana Chaos home is out of the question. "It is evident that circumstances have changed with respect to that moment. The state has to be firm and intelligent, dealing with the new circumstances," Rubalcaba said.